P.K. CMGI back over 20 for the first time in a while on the following news. Puts a few million $$$ back in Compork's portfolio value. El
AltaVista Debuts Unicast
SUPERSTITIAL(R) Ad Format
'Rock The Vote' SUPERSTITIAL on AltaVista Delivers Soaring 21%
Click-through Rate
PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- AltaVista Company, (www.altavista.com), the leading
search and information marketplace for consumers and businesses, and Unicast (www.unicast.com),
developer of the SUPERSTITIAL®, the Internet's Commercial(TM), announced today that AltaVista is
now accepting and reselling the SUPERSTITIAL online advertising format as a rate card item of the
company's standard advertising offerings. AltaVista is the first U.S. search engine to begin reselling the
SUPERSTITIAL format.
One of several SUPERSTITIAL campaigns run by AltaVista, the ``Rock the Vote'' SUPERSTITIAL
campaign launched earlier this month, is a key component in Rock the Vote's drive to register young
voters and alert them to presidential campaign issues. AltaVista's 21 percent click-through rate leads all
sites running the campaign. The campaign runs through Election Day, November 7.
``AltaVista is committed to offering our advertisers a choice of the most effective advertising solutions
available,'' said David Karnstedt, vice president of sales, AltaVista Company. ``Accepting Unicast's
SUPERSTITIAL brings us new incremental ad inventory and provides our advertisers with a dynamic
platform to communicate with millions of AltaVista users worldwide.''
Today, AltaVista's patented search technology powers an average of more than 50 million search
queries every day, averaging more than 30,000 searches per minute. In the B2B sector, over 1,000
international e-commerce companies, portals and global enterprises license AltaVista search
technology to turn their unstructured data into valuable information.
Developed by Unicast, The SUPERSTITIAL allows Web publishers to monetize advertisers' demand for
effective online advertising. With the SUPERSTITIAL, agencies and advertisers can combine the proven
persuasiveness of sound and rich graphics with the interactivity of the Internet to create integrated,
powerful online advertising.
``Increasingly, technically advanced Web sites such as AltaVista are taking aggressive steps to offer
their advertisers the types of formats needed to effectively message their brands online,'' said Richard V.
Hopple, Chairman and CEO of Unicast. ``Advertisers crave formats like the SUPERSTITIAL because
they have the ability to convey powerful, emotional messages that get noticed online and that
complement their offline efforts.''
About The SUPERSTITIAL®
Supported by a proprietary, polite delivery system, the SUPERSTITIAL provides consistent, CD-Rom
quality ad playback without slowing down Web browsing or Web site content delivery, regardless of the
user's connection speed.
Since the format's marketplace debut in May 1999, Unicast's SUPERSTITIAL has become a premium
online advertising category, available on hundreds of top Web sites spanning 19 vertical categories
across both the United States and Europe. National and international partnerships with leading online
advertising networks, including 24/7 Media, ad pepper media, DoubleClick, Engage, L90, Phase2Media
and Real Media, continue to accelerate the acceptance of the SUPERSTITIAL across the global online
landscape.
The SUPERSTITIAL is proprietary to Unicast. More information on Unicast and the SUPERSTITIAL can
be found at www.unicast.com.
About AltaVista
AltaVista Company is the leading search service and information marketplace at
altavista.com. Building on its strong search heritage and patented technology, AltaVista
software and services are used to unlock the full potential of the Internet for web users and to turn
unstructured data into valuable information for businesses. AltaVista performs more than 50 million web
search queries on average per day throughout the world.
AltaVista offers users informative services including AltaVista Search (http://www.altavista.com), Raging
Search (http://www.raging.com), AltaVista Shopping.com, and vertical search centers. AltaVista also
licenses its patented search technology and powers more than 1,000 of the world's leading e-commerce
firms, portals and enterprises. Headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., AltaVista is a majority-owned
operating company of CMGI Inc. (Nasdaq: CMGI - news).
About Unicast
Unicast is an online advertising solutions provider, committed to offering the most effective products and
services to its site and network partners and its agency and advertiser customers. Because the
company works directly with both advertisers and Web publishers, Unicast understands and acts on the
needs of both the buyers and sellers of online advertising. This unique central position in the
marketplace allows Unicast to continually deliver smarter solutions to both sides of the advertising
equation.
Unicast is based in New York City with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and
London. The company was founded as a joint venture between The MacManus Group, parent company
of D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, and BBN, now Genuity Inc. (Nasdaq: GENU - news) and is funded
by these companies, as well as Grace Capital, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC - news) and a number of private
investors. More information on Unicast can be found at www.unicast.com.
NOTE: AltaVista is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Shopping.com, Smart is
Beautiful and AltaVista Free Access are trademarks of AltaVista Company or its affiliates. Product
names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective
companies.
This release contains forward-looking statements which address a variety of subjects including, for
example, the expected benefits of the agreement between AltaVista and Unicast and the expected
interoperability of the technologies and products of AltaVista with those of Unicast. The following
important factors and uncertainties, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from
those described in these forward-looking statements: AltaVista depends on third-party technologies
which may not successfully interoperate with the technologies and products of AltaVista, Unicast or
other third parties; AltaVista may experience difficulties integrating technologies, operations and
personnel of recent acquisitions, AltaVista's growth depends upon continued and increased demand for
and market acceptance of AltaVista's web sites; and increased competition and technological changes
in the markets in which AltaVista competes. For a detailed discussion of these and other cautionary
statements, please refer to CMGI's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including
CMGI's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the most recently ended fiscal year. |
